


While our blood's still young

by whimsicule



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:06:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicule/pseuds/whimsicule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mario has just left. It's probably not the best time for Marco to realise that he's in love with his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While our blood's still young

**Author's Note:**

> It had to be done. Because everybody ships them; articles, magazine spreads, interviews... And because they're breaking my heart, that's why. Title is taking from Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap.

  
**Interviewer** : If you had a lot of money, which player would you buy?

**Marco** : I'd bring back Mario.

  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Marco isn’t prepared for it. He is one of the first to find out but he’s not – his face slips and his eyes start to burn and he’s always thought that world’s couldn’t really crumble; yet this is exactly what it feels like.   
  
Mario says, “I’m leaving”, and Marco is not prepared.  
  
  
  
  
They reach the Champions League final. Marco smiles and he’s happy, jumps around, and reaches for Mario because he can. He does the interviews, gives answers they’ve all prepared and tries to disconnect, tries to shut it all out because it hasn’t happened yet and they still have a few games ahead of them, a couple of months to spend time together. Marco goes to practice every day and watches Mario working with the physios; imagines what it’d be like without him and can’t.  
  
It’s a strange thing; because it’s only been a single season yet Mönchengladbach seems a lifetime away and this is so much home like nothing’s ever been home before. He can’t get his head around it – why Mario would like to leave. Because he is happy, Marco knows that, and they can keep up with the big guns, so much is clear. Guardiola is a pretty impressive character, but it’s not… It’s just that everything _fits_ , and if Mario leaves, Marco fears it might not anymore.  
  
They play Bayern in the league and get a draw, they finish a season that was okay but not great and everything has such a strong taste of finality to it that Marco can hardly sleep at night. May is over in a heartbeat and he is on a plane to London before he can count to three, Mario sitting beside him like he’s done all season, familiar music blasting from his headphones and concentrated gaze out the window. He got fit right in time, is in the squad, might start, and Marco thinks he’s less nervous about the final than the fact that this will be their last game as colleagues, at least for a very long time. It fills his stomach with dread that he tries to wash away with water.   
  
In London, the guys leave the two of them mostly to themselves, probably thinking there are a lot of words left between them when, in fact, Marco doesn’t have anything to say that doesn’t translate into _stay_ or _don’t go_ , which is technically the same, and he’s already told Mario that, leaving nothing. It’s not awkward, but it’s not comfortable either although it could be and it should, because that’s football and hardly anyone plays for the same club for the entirety of their career. Mario was not going to stay at Dortmund forever, Marco isn’t as naïve as to believe that, but it seems to soon and if Marco can’t deal with that, then sue him, he doesn’t care.   
  
The night before the final at Wembley, he tells Mario, “I’m not angry, you know? I’m just – I’m going to miss you.”  
  
“I’ll visit,” Mario says as if it’s about that, as if it’s that easy. “My family’s still up there. And the guys. And you.”  
  
 _It’s not the same_ , Marco wants to say. Instead he mutters, “yeah, true,” and switches off the lights. They’ve got an important match tomorrow.  
  
  
  
  
Nobody expects them to win. Maybe that’s why they do.  
  
  
  
  
It’s not the most beautiful goal that wins it for them. Marco falls onto the ball rather than kicks it and somehow squeezes it past Neuer and a couple of legs in the 83rd minute. But it’s Mario who passes to him, who sees him weaving his way through the defence because he always does and it’s special and so bittersweet and it tugs at Marco’s heart as he gets pushed to the ground and swallows more grass than he’s ever wanted to. He can pick out Mario’s hands from the dozens that are grabbing him, right there at his waist, fingers digging in hard and he turns his head blindly, pushes his forehead into someone’s chest and fights the burn that clogs his throat.  
  
“We did it,” someone says, but none of them can actually quite believe it.  
  
  
  
  
The next weeks pass in a haze and Marco spends most of them so drunk he can barely walk in a straight line. He thinks he does a couple of interviews like that and swears to himself to never re-watch any of them, because he might die from embarrassment, but it’s more fun than he has ever had in his life and it makes him forget. They get dragged from one TV appearance to the next and there’s a parade around Dortmund and a party at the stadium, and suddenly he’s on holiday with his family, Mario is away with his, they text and try to meet up, but things get in the way and then suddenly – he’s just gone.   
  
  
  
  
He runs into Mats in the parking lot. They share a quick hug, a pat on the back; he’s seen Mats during their break, unlike –  
  
“Good summer?” Mats asks nevertheless, smile easy and casual, as always.  
  
“Too short,” Marco replies as they take off towards the training pitch, bags shouldered and squinting against the sun. “Feels like we only left London yesterday.”  
  
Mats nods sympathetically. “I know. Still hasn’t really sunk in we won the Champions League, has it?”  
  
“I have a bruise because I keep pinching myself at the same spot,” Marco comments. “Maybe we should just win it again this year,” he adds with a grin, “so that we can fully appreciate it.”  
  
“I hear you,” Mats says as they shuffle into their locker room, still empty because they’re early, eager to start – restless. He continues, but Marco doesn’t hear a word as he approaches his locker and his seat and looks to the empty one on his left where Mario used to sit every morning and greet him with a smile and dubious joke, unless they’d carpooled because Mario had spent most evenings at Marco’s anyway. Now Marco thinks about the empty seat in his car and the empty spot in the changing room and his even emptier flat, and perhaps their Champions League win hasn’t sunk in yet, but the fact that Mario is really not here anymore; well, that hits home.   
  
Marco goes through training with as much concentration as he can muster. Exercising wipes his mind pleasantly clear for the majority of the time, but since it’s their first day back, Kloppo keeps it light, releases them earlier than he would farther into the league season. He claps Marco on the back before he turns to talk to Roman, and his smile has a certain edge to it that Marco can’t place.  
  
The team hangs out after and they talk about the summer, about signings, the new season, play some FIFA and the spot next to Marco gets filled by Kevin. He gets a few elbows into the ribs and he loses 5-1 against Nuri, so things are back to normal.  
  
Almost.  
  
  
  
  
He thinks about calling. Texting. Asking how Mario’s first day went and his fingers hover over the touchscreen of his phone, hesitating for minutes because Marco isn’t sure if he really wants to know, if he can take Mario telling him about his best day ever or the absolute worst and he is most likely not making any sense at all. Marco wants Mario to be happy, just not as happy as he’d be if he had stayed. Perhaps that makes him a bad friend, a bad person in general, and he needs to get himself in check before he says something he might end up regretting.  
  
So, he distracts himself, for a week or two. Marco is a sociable guy, always has been and he never has any trouble getting along with people. He’s got plenty of friends, in the team and outside of it and they keep him busy when training isn’t. Mostly, he crashes early; still not fully back in shape and Kloppo making them run bloody marathons takes a toll on him. Then one evening just before the first match of the season, he finds himself at home on his couch, looking at a stain that’s been there since the day he moved in, because Mario had pushed him over the armrest, making him spill his beer and he never bothered to get it cleaned. One of the cushions is still squished into the corner between back- and armrest, because Mario used to curl up right there when they had watched TV, throwing peanuts at the screen if he hadn’t liked something. Marco had always had to clean up after, but he’d never minded. Caro always complained, because she’d kept finding peanuts on the carpet, and she’d beat the cushion back into shape. After they’d broken up, the cushion had stayed where Mario pushed it.  
  
Marco breathes out a sigh and runs a hand across his face, noticing the slight itch because he’s caught sunburn on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. It’s eerily quiet all of a sudden. There is no girlfriend complaining about him being late, and no best friend laughing close to his ear, muttering, “I guess she’s the one wearing the pants, huh?”  
He reaches for his phone, still has both of them on speed-dial, but it’s Mario whom he texts. Quick and casual, a general _how’ve you been?_ that should not have him feel anxious in the slightest, yet that is exactly how his chest feels like, twisted and tight.   
  
When his phone starts ringing just a few minutes after he hit send, Marco nearly jumps out of his skin, almost drops it before mentally scolding himself. “Hey,” he says and has to clear his throat immediately after.   
  
_“Hey,”_ Mario replies. He sounds cheerful, and he sounds far too close. _“It’s good, so far.”_  
  
“What?”  
  
 _“My first two weeks. You just asked,”_ and Marco mentally slaps his forehead. _“It could be better, because I can feel my hamstring pulling a little and I don’t know if I’m going to start the first match, but – yeah, it’s good.”_  
  
And perhaps Marco really did hope that Mario would be miserable in Munich, because hearing his voice filled with content leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, making him a truly bad person because his first two weeks back have been good as well. Sure, it could’ve been better as well, if Mario had been there, but Marco had done his best to forget that fact, hadn’t he? He’s probably lost the right to complain about it. “Cool,” he says for the lack of something else. “So. What’s it like to work with the great Guardiola?” If it comes out harsher than Marco intends, Mario doesn’t mention it.  
  
 _“Different,”_ he says.  
  
“Different from what?”  
  
 _“Different from what I’d expected,”_ Mario replies. _“Different from Kloppo. I mean, of course he’s different. If there were two Kloppos…”_  
  
“Oh, God forbid,” Marco cuts in, feels a laugh bubbling up in his throat, but it comes out sounding more like a cough because his chest is still tight. “I don’t think the world is ready for two Kloppos.”  
  
 _“And it never will be,”_ Mario adds and already, it feels too much like before, too normal and effortless, like Mario is just calling because he’s bored and wants to come over, or grab dinner together. _“But seriously, Pep is nice. Ridiculously nice, but like, you get that he’s not going to take any shit. And he knows what he’s doing, so that’s a good thing.”_  
  
Marco doesn’t think there can be any doubt about Guardiola knowing what he’s doing, that much is self-evident, but he doesn’t say so, mainly because Bayern Munich is different, is strange in that way, he thinks, because there’d been other great coaches before who’d known as much, and they hadn’t lasted long. “Cool,” he comments again, head feeling strangely empty after he’s rattled off these thoughts and for a second, he doesn’t know what to say to Mario, and that’s a first. “And… everything else? Already settled in?” It’s terrible smalltalk, and Marco kind of resents himself for sinking so low.  
  
 _“Mostly, yeah. Living alone has got its perk. But… I suppose it’s a dick move if I invite my mum down just to do my laundry, right?”_  
  
Marco bites back a grin. He hopes that Mario’s mum wouldn’t do that, even if he asked. “Man up, Mario,” he tells him. “Unless you want to flip your underwear inside out.”  
  
 _“Ew, dude. Gross,”_ and he laughs again.  
  
Marco lets his head fall back and stares up at the ceiling, tries to imagine what Mario’s flat looks like and how he looks in it and –  
  
 _“Good to talk to you,”_ Mario interrupts his thoughts, _“but I got to run. Meeting Toni and Holger for dinner.”_  
  
“Say hi from me.”  
  
 _“I will. Text you. Bye.”_  
  
And he hangs up, just like that. Marco keeps holding the phone to his ear and looks at the stain on his couch.  
  
  
  
  
The text comes earlier than Marco expects, just a few hours later when he’s drifting off to sleep.  
  
 _Do the guys miss me?_ , it reads.  
  
Marco’s thumb hovers over the screen for a moment. _They do_ , he texts back and after hesitating briefly, he adds, _I do too_.  
  
About two minutes later, his phones buzzes again.  
  
 _I miss you the most_.  
  
Marco can’t fall asleep after that.  
  
  
  
  
He ends up falling over his own feet a lot during training the next day. The guys laugh at him, mostly, and Marco supposes he looks pretty funny, but he’s a professional athlete, a quite good one as well, and he should have more coordination than that, tired or not. He expects Kloppo to tell him off, get a grip, because Kloppo might be a funny guy and a father figure to all of them, but he’s pretty damn serious about practice sessions and football. And Marco being a klutz is grinding on his nerves, he can tell, but for some reason, Kloppo cuts him more than a little slack, only makes him run around the pitch for quarter of an hour. It’s almost as if his girlfriend has broken up with him all over again, because Marco had felt slightly off the rockers for a few days after Caro had moved out and Kloppo had only made him run double laps then too.  
  
Kevin is waiting for him after he gets out of the showers, wearing that thoughtful look he doesn’t wear very often, and he watches Marco tying his shoes and shrugging on his jacket.  
  
“You’re looking rough,” he observes as Marco just about manages to swallow back a yawn. “Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine,” he replies, too aware of his bag’s strap cutting into his shoulder, and the empty stop to his right.  
  
“Sure?”  
  
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”  
  
Kevin doesn’t say anything to that. Instead, they meet up with Leo and Mo at Marco’s, have some takeaway for dinner although the shouldn’t (the first match of the season is only days away), play some FIFA and other games Marco doesn’t pay attention to, and he watches as Leo pulls the cushion out of the position it’s been in for ages and uses it to sit on the floor.  
  
  
  
  
They play Freiburg first, which is a relatively good start; not too tough, not too easy-going. It still only ends in a draw, which sucks so massively Marco can’t even begin to describe it, especially because he kept running into areas, waiting for that one precise pass, trying to set up quick double passes, before he can remind himself that Mario is halfway across Germany, wearing that ridiculous red kit, playing Hannover with Toni and Holger and Basti and Philipp. Kloppo doesn’t shrug it off, and he is stern with them, but he doesn’t blame them, knows that there is something wrong that hasn’t been fixed yet, hasn’t been replaced, and it’s going to take time. The season is only starting; there are a lot of points still up for grabs.   
  
He goes home alone and watches the highlights of the first match day. They run through Hertha vs Bremen and Frankfurt vs Mönchengladbach before they get to Bayern and Hannover, which is the big talk of the day, of course, cameras all zoomed in on Guardiola cutting a sharp figure in his charcoal suit, waltzing up and down the sideline and gesticulating at his players, which is an awful lot like Kloppo and yet worlds apart. The cameras that don’t follow his every move stick to Mario, sitting on the bench between Basti and Martínez. Marco realises that it’s the first time he’s actually seen Mario in over a month, which is odd considering that for a year, they’d barely spent a day apart. But he looks relaxed, maybe a tad nervous because he can’t stop bouncing his right leg.   
  
Guardiola puts him on in the 70th minute and Mario plays a solid twenty minutes, but Bayern are already 3-1 up by that time, so it’s only a matter of keeping the score the way it is. It’s pretty unspectacular, almost seamless. Marco doesn’t know what he expected.   
  
His phone rings, and he knows who it is without looking at it. “Just watching the highlights,” he says as a greeting. “You played well.”  
  
Mario chuckles. _“Can I tell you a secret?”_  
  
“Sure.”  
  
 _“I took the wrong shinpads,”_ he says and Marco can practically see him grinning fiercely.  
  
“How were they wrong?” he asks.  
  
Mario chuckles then. _“Because they were the ones from the Champions League. With the BVB-logo. I was so nervous, thought they’d bring me luck.”_ He pauses, and Marco bites his lip. _“I hope I haven’t just jinxed our entire season.”_  
  
“Oh, I hope you have,” Marco tells him and he is being entirely honest. He wants Mario to have the individual season of his life, especially since this one’s leading up to the World Cup (he keeps forgetting about that; it’d seemed so far away last year). But he doesn’t want Bayern Munich to have a good season at all.   
  
_“Don’t be cruel, man,”_ Mario complains, but Marco shakes his head despite Mario not being able to see him.  
  
“You brought this on yourself. You know I wish you all the best,” he explains, “but Kevin and I, we’ve got it all planned out, you know? Dortmund’s gotten all three titles, and this year, we’ll get them all at once. And when we’ve done the treble, we’re going to Brazil to kick ass.” He kicks his legs up and watches on-screen Mario give a few short answers to some question he hasn’t registered.  
  
 _“Not objecting to Brazil, but we need to talk about a treble.”_  
  
Marco thinks Mario tries to joke, tries to be light and funny about this, but it sounds off, as much as Marco has felt off the entire day. “It feels weird, right?” he asks before his brain has caught up with his lips. “I mean, like – you know.”  
  
 _“Yeah,”_ Mario replies quietly. _“Yeah, I know.”_ He pauses, long and heavily, and Marco can hear him breathing as if he were sitting next to him. _“But Brazil, right?”_  
  
It sounds like a promise.  
  
  
  
  
Things could go smoothly from there. He and Mario develop some sort of not-routine where they call each other every other day and text in between, filling one another in on pranks that were pulled and stuff that happens. They don’t talk about football much and if the do, it’s mostly foreign league games they catch on their day off; how Mourinho’s return to Chelsea isn’t going as well as the Portuguese probably expected, how Shinji is doing at Manchester United, how Pirlo is playing for Juventus and Messi’s ever-extending list of records.  
  
“Does he talk about Barça?” Marco wonders out aloud. Mario is on speaker, because he is rummaging through his freezer looking for peas.   
  
_“No,”_ Mario answers. _“But I haven’t asked. Not sure he wants to be asked, to be honest. It feels kind of – out of place, you know? We should be focusing on ourselves. Although – what would you ask him if you could?”_  
  
Marco doesn’t find any peas, but he finds a bottle of Vodka he definitely hadn’t put in there. He throws a suspicious glance over his shoulder to where his phone is lying on the countertop. “Not sure. Maybe how Messi managed to score five against Leverkusen? We’re playing them Sunday and five goals would be neat.”  
  
So, things could go smoothly, considering they’re somehow making it work and Dortmund wins the next couple of games whereas Bayern loses to Mönchengladbach (which gives Marco extra satisfaction) halfway into October. The top of the Bundesliga table is pretty tight though, like it always is right in the beginning, but Marco hopes that they can stay on top this time, because after winning the Champions League, he really wants that local title, and the entire team really wants it back.  
  
They could, but they don’t. Because instead of scoring five goals against Leverkusen, he gets a studded foot to the ankle and is out for a month, out of the second Champions League game and the international call-up. He could’ve broken bones and ripped off tendons, he is aware of that, so a little tear and a month out is not the worst that could’ve happened (especially considering the pain he’d felt at that moment), but it’s still a fucking long time. Then half the guys are called up for the National Team and he is stuck in Dortmund working with the physios, having to look at about a million Instagram pictures that Mario and André and Toni and the others upload; playing cards and lounging together and he has to get out of the house. So he goes grocery shopping. And promptly runs into Caro in the cereal aisle, which – well, it’s probably the worst timing ever.   
  
Now, Marco’s been single for almost a year and it’d been a pretty amicable break-up, all things considered. She had called it quits without really giving him a solid reason and the fact that it hadn’t bothered him much, that he’d just accepted that she wanted to go separate ways; well, that should have been a clue that things hadn’t been going great. Technically, they’re not friends, but he supposes they can be civil to one another and he – he isn’t sure that he still loves her, but he has no hard feelings. Nevertheless, there is a moment where they are looking at each other, still a few feet between them, and Marco knows they’re both thinking the same; either make a run for it, or be an adult. They choose the latter.  
  
“Hey,” he says and walks over to her with a limp he knows she sees. Caro looks pretty, but she always has, always does, hair a bit shorter than when they’d been together, which suits her well.  
  
“Hi,” she replies and after not hearing her voice for so long, it’s still familiar. Then she points at his leg. “I’ve heard about your injury. Is it bad?”  
  
Marco shrugs. “Nah, just a tear. Another week, then I’m back on the pitch.”  
  
“Good. I’m glad.”  
  
And they stand in front of each other, awkwardly yes, but at least not uncomfortably so, until Marco clears his throat. And in an honest to God truth, he doesn’t know what possesses him to ask, “Do you… want to grab coffee, or something?”  
  
And equally, he has no clue why she says yes.  
  
  
  
  
It turns out to be nice. Different too and Caro is someone he’s always been comfortable with so they catch up, mainly on what she’s been doing because there’s nothing he’s done she doesn’t know about; the Champions League has kind of been unavoidable. They part after an hour, but with plans to meet up again, because apparently, they can be friends. Yet when Marco gets home that night after dinner with his parents and lies in bed, he thinks about having let Caro slip through his fingers and letting Mario move out of his reach, in a way, and he wonders if he might want them both back.  
  
  
  
  
He is part of the squad that travels to Turin for the next Group stage match. If they win this one, they’re all but through to the knockout stages and it’s a relief, because although their group hadn’t been the Group of Death this year, they know they can never take these things for granted. So what if they’d won against Arsenal and Porto, it might still turn ugly if they don’t pay attention. It’s why Marco doesn’t get to start, but Kloppo promises to put him on in the second half, especially since it’s still 1-1 by the time they head inside for the break. In the beginning of the second half, Juventus come so awfully close so many times that Marco starts to feel slightly light-headed by the time Kloppo sends him to warm up. He comes on for Mo and five minutes later, Marchisio scores and they run after the ball like idiots for ten minutes before Kehli yells at them to focus and Marco manages to latch onto a bad pass between the defenders and slots the equaliser home just before the whistle blows. It’s the third goal of this Champions League campaign and he guesses they can be happy to get a draw. He feels even better when he goes back to the locker room to find a text from Mario.  
  
  
  
  
It gets cold early this year and at the end of November, the pitches are already rock-solid and frozen and Marco fears that one bad tackle might scrape a yard of skin off his leg. Their away game against Bayern is also awfully close and it’s probably the biggest reason for the chill stubbornly clinging to his bones. Texts and calls between him and Mario become less frequent (Marco hopes it’s because they’re just both stressed and tensions are running high thanks to the media). The guys don’t say anything and neither does Kloppo, but Marco can tell that he gets more sideway glances than usually, worried and almost concerned as if he can’t handle it when it’s pretty obvious he is doing just fine.   
  
He tells Caro as much, because their not-really-dates become more frequent and she’s easy to talk to and he thinks he knows what he wants now. He likes her company.   
  
“Are you really?” she asks.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Fine. Are you really okay with it, because it’s all right if you’re not.”  
  
“Yes,” he replies with a frown. “I mean, why wouldn’t I be? It’s just what happens. It sucks, but this isn’t Barcelona where footballers go as kids and play until they’re too old and then become coaches and even then, they sometimes leave.”  
  
“You sound bitter,” she comments, stirs in the last puddle of cappuccino in her cup, then tossing the biscotti in to butcher it with her spoon.   
  
Marco sighs. “Maybe I am,” he confesses. “But that’s life, right? I guess I’ve been feeling a bit bitter since we broke up.”  
  
Caro puts her spoon down and stills. A lock of hair falls forward from behind her ear and tucks it back irritably, probably thinking about cutting it again. Weirdly enough, it makes him think about the way Mario’s hair is far too long at the moment, like he’s trying to imitate Gomez’s ridiculous quiff.   
  
“Marco,” she says with a serious tone, and her eyes close off, shielding her thoughts and maybe putting a shield up between herself and him and Marco never understood if he’d hurt her in any way, hadn’t loved her enough or cared for her like she’d needed him too. This, this right there looks like there’s a lot of hurt he’s never noticed before.   
  
“What?” he asks her still. “Is it so absurd that I just – I kind of want you back in my life?”  
  
Caro looks at him for such a long time, familiar lines of her face calm and gentle and soft, but her gaze is solid and unwavering, like this is a conversation she has imagined, like she has prepared for what Marco would ask her and what she needed to say or do.  
  
“I would like to be friends,” she tells him. “But I don’t think it’s _me_ you want back.” Then she gets up and leaves.  
  
  
  
  
He can’t make sense of her words, no matter how hard and long he thinks about them. Normally, he’d call Mario, because Mario had sat next to his miserable self right after the break-up and listened to him and when Marco had stopped talking, Mario had taken over and distracted him and only a couple of days later, he’d realised that he’d forgotten about being upset. Yet somehow, he doesn’t think calling Mario now, two days before they travel to Munich, hundreds of hostile fans with them and thousands waiting in the Allianz Arena, is a good idea. He considers just swallowing it down, but it churns on his mind, grinds his nerves until he wakes up with splintering headaches, so he catches Mats’ elbow when they’re at their hotel in Munich and settling in for the night.   
  
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” and the fact that Mats doesn’t even raise his eyebrows speaks volumes about Marco’s ability to be subtle when something’s bothering him. He definitely needs to work on that.   
  
“Sure,” Mats says and opens the door to his room, sits down on the bed and waits for Marco to do the same, but Marco can’t keep still, so he starts pacing and runs his hands over his face repeatedly. “What’s up?”  
  
Marco stills. “Not really sure, to be honest,” and he breathes out a heavy sigh, tension holding him tightly in its grip.  
  
“Something to do with Mario?”  
  
“No,” Marco starts and does eventually sink down onto an armchair right across from Mats. “Yes. No.” He fights the urge to tear out his hair. “Man, I don’t know. Maybe? It’s just all one massive blob clogging my head.”  
  
“Sounds pleasant,” Mats comments dryly. “But you kind of have to give me more than that if you want advice. If that’s what you’re after. I mean, you can just talk and I can listen, that’s fine.”  
  
“I’ve been meeting with Caro again,” Marco cuts to the chase, because he doesn’t want to drag this out either. It’s already late and he’s had a hard time going to sleep as of late. They all need to be rested for tomorrow.  
  
Mats sits and takes it in. When Marco doesn’t continue, he says, “okay,” and silently urges him to go on.  
  
“We get on, still, and it was nice and I think I miss her, so I was just wondering what it’d be like to get back together.”  
  
“And what did she have to say about that?”   
  
Marco shrugs, clears his throat and looks at his sneakers, bright colours; Mario would have liked them and absentmindedly he thinks that they could be Mario’s, forgotten and never collected. “Well. That’s – kind of the thing. She… she said it wasn’t her I wanted back.”  
  
He looks up again, but Mats’ face remains motionless, without expression, just the very picture of calm and attentive and suddenly, Marco feels his heart beating rapidly against his ribs, like he’s just spilled the beans on something big and dramatic when in fact – it’s not, is it? He doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but perhaps it is and perhaps Mats’ expression is so similar to Caro’s for a specific reason Marco can’t seem to grasp.  
  
“Okay,” Mats repeats. “So this is where you think she’s referring to Mario?”  
  
“I guess,” Marco says, pulling up his legs and tugging on the laces of the sneakers that most likely belong to Mario after all. “I mean; there’s no one else who’s gone, is there? And I kind of told her about the match and – I don’t know, man. I just have this feeling and I can’t…” He trails of, because he can’t a lot of things at the moment and his head is throbbing, has been since they landed and he doesn’t want to play Bayern tomorrow, not like this and not with Mario on the wrong team, because maybe –  
  
“You think she doesn’t want to get back with you because of Mario,” Mats spells it out for him and Marco nods, chewing on his lips to let this tension go somewhere. “She thinks you’re projecting feelings.”  
  
Feelings. “Huh.”  
  
“Is that what you’re doing?”  
  
It certainly makes sense, Marco thinks, grinding his teeth. He hadn’t really missed Caro that much after breaking up and perhaps that person-shaped hole he’s just recently discovered wasn’t left by her, which is unfair, he realises that, but he can’t help being dense with regards to these matters. “Maybe,” he mutters.  
  
Mats leans forward, placing his forearms on his knees and his forehead creases slightly when he looks at Marco. “It’s really okay, you know. If you miss him. We all do, we all find it strange that we have to play him tomorrow. It’s harder for you, and that’s okay as well.”  
  
He mirrors Mats’ stance and additionally buries his face in his hands. His voice comes out strained and muffled and from outside in the hallway he can hear people running and two doors slamming; probably Mo and Leo. “I just – feel stupid, I guess.”  
  
“You shouldn’t,” Mats tells him quietly and Marco can hear him shift on the bed, the springs groaning beneath his weight. “Catch some sleep, all right? You look knackered.”  
  
His legs feel a bit numb when he gets up. “Yeah, feel so too. Thanks, man.”  
  
“Anytime,” Mats smiles and sees him out the door.   
  
  
  
  
Usually, Marco doesn’t dream; or he dreams weird shit that is just so strange he forgets it five minutes after he’s woken up. But that night, after he finally falls asleep, he dreams about the match against Bayern, about so much booing and chanting that he can barely hear his own thoughts and they get utterly destroyed. He forces himself to stop counting after the fifth goal goes past Roman and Mario is involved in every single one and he celebrates with Toni and Basti; properly celebrates as if Dortmund means nothing to him and he grins at Guardiola who’s showing him thumbs up from the bench. Marco wakes up when Mario’s glance goes straight through him like he’s not even seeing Marco, and it takes him a good ten minutes to realise that the match hasn’t actually happened yet.  
  
He can’t get any breakfast down after that, feels dread pooling in the pit of his stomach and an unpleasant sort of anxiety and before they head to the bus, Kloppo pulls him aside.  
  
“Are you all right?” he asks and Marco hates himself for not being able to stomach this entire thing as well as he’s supposed to as a professional.  
  
“I’m okay, Jürgen. Really. If I fuck up, you can take me off, but I – I need to play.”  
  
Kloppo raises his brows at him.  
  
“I promise,” Marco insists, and he is grateful that their coach trusts him that much.  
  
The bus ride is quiet, music blasting in his ears and the tension is tangible but so is their concentration, because this might be about three points, but it is also about so much more than that. This game might set the tone for the entire season and after so many seasons of not defeating Dortmund in the league, the defeat in the Champions League final, Bayern is surely going to show some teeth. Marco breathes in deep. He is prepared. And Dortmund has always been good at biting back.  
  
So he concentrates while they get changed, tries to shut the noises out and get in the zone, for the lack of a better word. But they leave the guest locker room after a short time and lining up in the tunnel and then he sees him out of the corner of his eyes, wearing a red that is just so wrong on him and Marco feels a violent leap in his chest, like someone is pulling at his ribcage with invisible thread, trying to get his insides out through his throat.   
  
Mario looks at and sees him as well and Marco wants to slap a hand over his mouth because he knows he’s starting to grin like an idiot, but it doesn’t actually matter that much, because Mario is grinning too and suddenly, he feels so much better he can’t even begin to describe it. It takes more than just a bit of restraint not to run towards him like some Disney princess. Thankfully, Mario is already close and only three, two, one step away and Marco can finally pull him close. Texting, calling, it’s just all bullshit compared to seeing a person in the flesh and Mario is so solid and familiar against his chest, and he remembers the way Mario winds his arms around his waist so well; it is just –   
  
“So good to see you,” Mario smiles at him.  
  
Marco can’t help it. “You need a haircut,” he says and tugs on a few strands that fall into Mario’s forehead. Only when his fingertips touch skin does he realise that the gesture is strangely – intimate. He clears his throat. “Give me your shirt, yeah?”  
  
“Count on it,” Mario winks, and he’s off saying hi to the rest.  
  
  
  
  
The game starts and it is intense. For the first five minutes, Marco is so thrown off by having Mario opposite him instead of next to, but he manages to collect himself, manages to adjust to the new system their opponents have adopted, slips through the lines of defence and misses a few chances that he shouldn’t miss in any match, so by the time they pour back into the locker room, Kloppo ranting at them about wasting opportunities, he isn’t feeling too great. After the break, in the fiftieth minute, Mario skips past him like he’s always done during practice, and curls a shot past Roman and into the back of the next. It numbs them, for a few seconds, not more, because they can’t afford to be rattled like some backstreet football team, but it takes a full twenty-five minutes for them to get a proper counter-attack going and Marco runs, knows Mario is in his neck but he’s never been quite as fast, so Marco cuts inside, right into the pass Nuri sends straight forward, and it feels almost too easy to send it into the bottom left corner.  
  
It remains 1-1. That Mario and Marco are the ones who’ve scored is probably ironic.  
  
“You’re leaving in the morning, right?” Mario asks as they walk off the pitch together, heads leaning in. Marco nods briefly. “A couple of guys are coming over to mine after, just to hang out. You should come.”  
  
It’s not a question. But Marco wouldn’t say no anyway.  
  
  
  
  
He likes Toni. And that might be part of the problem. He likes the guy, he gets on with him, they have spent a considerable amount of time with him during call-ups or the Euros and he knows that Mario likes him, that he probably is his closest friend in Munich. But Marco hasn’t seen his best friend in months, and Toni can see him every bloody day and he does not need to be glued to Mario like a wasp would stick to honey.   
  
Marco doesn’t brood. He listens to Jérôme talking about his holiday and then he and Holger lock horns arguing about Manchester United and Manchester City, but Mario remains seated next to Toni and Toni appears to be going on and on and on about something, and then they get up and head out onto the balcony for what feels like forever and Marco is not brooding, but he is beginning to feel like there is an entire world growing between them, and he can’t cut across. He doesn’t have a bad time, but the entire point of him going was to talk to Mario. If he’d known, he’d have dragged Mats along, or Kevin or Ilkay.   
  
Thomas and Holger excuse themselves just after eleven and Marco goes to the kitchen to get himself another beer. When he gets back into the living room, Toni and Mario are back inside and Jérôme is gone. Toni claps Mario on the shoulder and send Marco a smile.   
  
“I’ll let you guys catch up,” he says, and then he’s gone as well.  
  
The bottle is cold in Marco’s grip and he takes a swig, although he probably should not have a third one. But he tells himself that it’s calming him down, had no idea why he even feels anxious all of a sudden because this is what he wanted after all; time alone with his best friend so that they can hang out like they haven’t in far too long. The twitch around Mario’s lips looks like nerves have hit him as well.   
  
“Grab a coat?” he asks Marco and nods towards the balcony. The door is still ajar, lights of the city glowing in an orange hue that dip-dyes the sky. “I need some air.”  
  
“Sure,” Marco says and grabs another beer for Mario, then follows him out. There are two deckchairs and the balcony’s not big, but it’s a nice view and it feels private. He sinks down with a groan and limbs that are stiff from the match despite a long ice bath. They clink their bottles and stare ahead and finally, the silence feels comfortable again, like this is where they’re both meant to be in this exact moment and this is exactly what they’re supposed to be doing.   
  
At midnight, Munich’s church bells start ringing and Mario sighs deeply. Marco turns his head, drinks in his profile against the dark backdrop, half in the shadows, half illuminated by the still bright glow below them. Mario lifts his bottle, sips once and drops it in his lap, starts to peel away the label.   
  
“It’s not Dortmund,” he speaks up eventually.  
  
Marco pulls his coat tighter around his body. “No shit,” slips out before he can’t control his mouth.   
  
“I know, right? It’s not bad here. It’s really different, but it’s good too. But – it’s not Dortmund.”  
  
His hands dig deep into his pockets, his nails deep into his skin. “What do you want me to say?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Mario breathes out and turns his head to face him, smiling lopsidedly, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes and Marco needs to silently count to ten in his head and force himself to stay seated, because he thinks he might be about to do something very stupid. “It’s just,” Mario continues, “I thought I could do it and perhaps it’s too early to say. But I thought I could let go of some things and I think I was wrong.”  
  
Marco counts his heartbeats, probably far too many for one single minute. “Don’t beat yourself up. You’ll be fine. It’s new, so of course it’s hard. You just – you just got to hang in there.” He wants to bridge the gap between them and wind an arm or two around Mario’s shoulder.   
  
“It’d be easier with you,” Mario says.  
  
Marco swallows around a lump that’s clogged his throat. “Sorry, but no coach in the world is going to lure me to Bayern Munich.”  
  
And this time, Mario’s smile is anything but happy. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”  
  
  
  
  
In retrospect, Marco concludes that it was a bad idea and that he should’ve gone back to the hotel with the team rather than going with Mario, because if his mind had been a bit messed up before, it is a true clusterfuck now. He wakes up several times each night, knowing that he dreamed something utterly disturbing, because his heart is beating and his pulse is racing, but he can never remember. He loses his appetite and a noticeable amount of weight (it is not that much to be fair, but their physios notice every single gram that’s missing) and although most people don’t know about it, Marco has a very short temper and his fuse is cut even shorter leading up to their Christmas break. They’re still two points ahead of Bayern Munich, and Marco is scoring more goals than in the previous season, so there is no logical reason for him to be upset in any way; except one.   
  
Just texting and talking on the phone, after having Mario physically close for less than a day; it just doesn’t seem enough anymore. Marco is aware that he is generally being a pain in the ass as a result of that, but nobody calls him out on it, they’re all tolerating him for some reason, until one day, before their last match of the year, he throws his body into a reckless tackle and sends Sven tumbling to the ground. Everybody comes to a sudden halt as Sven reaches for his aching knee and Marco scrambles to his feet, heart rate at 180. Blood is rushing in his ears for no apparent reason and he fears that if he closes his eyes for just a second, he’s going to pass out.   
  
“Reus!” Kloppo barks across the pitch, face angry like Marco rarely sees it during practice. “Off the pitch. Now!” Marco hesitates, and his coach points angrily towards the lockers. “Get off, or I will drag you myself!”  
  
Marco lowers his head, shrinks away from Nuri and Mats who’ve come up beside him, and makes the quickest escape he’s ever made, because Kloppo has never yelled at him like that, and Marco thoroughly deserves it. He sits down on the bench inside after kicking an empty bottle around the room and feels so bad he thinks he might throw up; feels like he is the biggest piece of scum that ever existed and he can’t help it if his eyes start burning from irritation and his lip is throbbing because he is biting down on it until he tastes blood.  
  
Marco can’t tell how long he sits there, but when he hears steps approaching and sees Kloppo entering the room, his stomach drops to his ankles. He shrinks a few good inches when his coach sits down right next to him.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he forces out and it’s hard to say not because he doesn’t mean it, but because he can barely breathe.   
  
“I know you are,” Kloppo says, sounding as he normally does, which is a relief. “But you need to apologise to Sven, not me. You’re lucky he just needs some ice and it’s nothing serious.”  
  
“Fuck, sorry, I’m,” Marco begins and stumbles over the words flowing out of his mouth. “I didn’t mean to, I don’t what happened, I just –”  
  
“I know exactly what happened,” Kloppo cuts him off. “And it’s clearly been building up for a while. I am not angry with you, you have to get that, but I’m bloody disappointed, because you said you were fine, and I trusted you. And now that makes me look like an idiot.” He puts a heavy hand on Marco’s shoulder. “Marco, you’re a decent boy, we all know that, and you’re still playing brilliantly. But if you don’t stop driving yourself into the ground, I’ll personally suspend you and make sure that you will play with the B team for the rest of the season. Understood?”  
  
“Perfectly,” Marco answers quickly.  
  
“Good. Glad we cleared that up. And please talk to someone, because swallowing that shit will give you stomach ulcers.”  
  
  
  
  
Mats takes the choice out of Marco’s hand, which is probably a good thing. He takes Marco by the elbow after practice, doesn’t allow Marco to get into his own car but practically forces him into the front seat of his and drives off. Marco sits in the moving car, wondering about what the hell he is going to do and thinks about throwing himself out of the moving car to end his misery. Or perhaps he should just go to sleep; perhaps all he needs is one uninterrupted night of sleep. Only when Mats stops does Marco realise that he’s driven him home, but apparently not just to drop him off. Without a single word uttered between them, Mats follows him up the stairs and into his flat like it’s perfectly normal.   
  
Mats heads straight into the kitchen while Marco remains in his living room, dumbstruck and his heart still beating painfully hard. His friend returns just a minute later with a bottle of water and a glass, filled with a clear liquid that is clearly not water and Marco distractedly wonders if Mats found the Vodka stashed in his freezer. Mats holds it out for him. It’s just a finger’s width, but Marco eyes it sceptically.   
  
“Drink it,” Mats advises calmly, in all seriousness. “It’ll cleanse your system; get your feet back on the ground.”  
  
Marco chugs it back and shudders, coughs twice, then he kicks off his shoes and fall onto his couch where the other cushion is once again squished into the corner, because Marco pushed it there. Feeling the burn in his throat, he closes his eyes and wills his pulse to go back to its normal speed.   
  
The couch dips towards one side when Mats flops down beside him. “Okay,” he says. “Spill it.”  
  
Marco groans. He has no idea and his head is already crying out in pain because he’s spent the past couple of months wrecking his brain. “I’d love to spill it. But I don’t have a fucking clue okay? I don’t know.”  
  
“Hm,” Mats hums. “I thought so.”  
  
“Did you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Mats confirms. “You know what else I think?” He hands Marco the bottle of water and watches as he unscrews the top with trembling fingers.  
  
“Enlighten me.”  
  
Mats tilts his head to the side and eyes him weirdly. Marco wants to sink into his couch and disappear between the cushions. He wants Mats to speak more than anything; but he wants him to stay quiet all the same.   
  
“I think you’re in love with him,” Mats says and his voice is solid and firm. “And I think you’re just starting to realise it.”  
  
  
  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
Marco wipes his sleeve across his mouth and sinks down onto the tiles between the toilet and the wall. “I think it was the Vodka. I _hope_ it was the Vodka.” Mats makes a move to help him up, but Marco shrugs him off. “No, please. I can’t move. And the tiles are cold.”  
  
“Okay.” Mats sits down cross-legged in front of him. He looks concerned, which is not surprising. Marco guesses he’d be concerned too if his friend had bolted for the bathroom and emptied the content of his stomach after having been told he might be in love with his best friend. Granted, Marco really thinks it was the Vodka. But once he gets over the initial nausea and the aftermath of throwing up, he is still confronted with Mats’ observation.   
  
“I’m not gay,” he says and he doesn’t even exactly know why he says it. It might be the very first consequential thought that flashes through his head and he is able to hold on to.   
  
“That’s not what I said,” Mats replies calmly. “I said I think you’re in love with Mario.”  
  
Marco tries to refrain from flinching away from his words. It feels like a wound has been cut wide open and it bleeds every time he moves. “Isn’t that sort of a package deal?”  
  
“Not really, no.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
Mats sighs. “Are you, though? In love with him? And let me just add, there is nothing wrong with that.”  
  
“I know!” Marco blurts, can’t help it because he is not a homophobe or anything, he’s had a few gay teammates in his career, not many, but two or three. He doesn’t have a problem with it, but – “I don’t… I mean, I’m not – at least I don’t think so.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Marco wants to say no straight away. He may not be the brightest fish in the pond, yet surely, he can’t be dense enough to fall in love without even realising it, and with his best friend at that. But he also remembers the tightness in his chest and the shiver running through his body when he’d seen Mario again. They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and now Marco wonders if it’s more than that.   
  
So he says a quiet “no” and closes his eyes, tries to stay calm when he wants to do nothing but freak out. “But – that’s insane, right?”  
  
“You want me to tell you something?” Mats asks.  
  
“Not sure,” he says, but Mats goes on anyway.  
  
“I don’t think you’ve noticed, but the way you’ve been changing, and acting – it’s like you’re going through a bad break-up.”  
  
Marco doesn’t have anything to say after that. He thinks he might be going through several stages of shock at once. Eventually, Mats pulls him up, drags him into his bedroom and helps him out of his shoes and coat.  
  
“Get some sleep,” Mats tells him. “Call me if you need anything.”  
  
It doesn’t take long for Marco to be out like a light. He’s exhausted.  
  
  
  
  
Marco doesn’t even remember how they first met. They might’ve started talking after a league match, exchanged numbers. Or perhaps a friend had introduced them to each other. It’s kind of ridiculous that he doesn’t know, but it’s never mattered, because one day, Mario was just there and he’d turned into the first person Marco talked to in the morning and the last person he texted each night. He’d been with Caro for four years and it’d taken him less than a month to get over her. Mario has been gone for a handful of months – and there is no getting-over-it happening at all.   
  
He’s probably in deeper shit than he initially thought.  
  
  
  
  
The team travels to Bremen for the last match before their winter break. Marco feels considerably better, but he knows that there is no chance of him playing. There are some things Kloppo takes very seriously, and discipline is one of them, so he takes a seat on the bench between Leo and Sven, who is thankfully only resting as a precaution and who’d waved off Marco’s apology like no big deal. It’s freezing cold and Marco pulls his blanket up to his eyes. Werder are continuing their bad form of the previous season, so they are 2-0 up by halftime and Marco can barely feel his toes. Hardly anything happens in the second half and Marco is glad when they’re pouring into the bus, already warm, and he sleeps all the way back to Dortmund.   
  
He goes over to Nuri’s the next day, together with Mats and Neven, to watch Leverkusen play Bayern Munich at home. Basti is resting, so Toni takes over his position in midfield, just behind Mario and it just irks Marco, the same way it’d bothered him in Munich, when they put their heads together before every free kick, closer than necessary, definitely and he starts plucking away the label of his beer, bobbing at the knees until Mats pushes his elbow between his ribs. Marco just can’t help it. He gets that dreaded feeling that Mario is slowly but steadily replacing him; first as partner on the pitch, and perhaps as best friend off it as well. Maybe Marco is being paranoid for no reason, maybe he is so far in over his head that there’s no way back and he’s terrified.   
  
He heads out onto the terrace when the match is still in full progress, despite it being a few solid degrees below zero, cold enough to freeze his balls off and he shuffles from one foot to the other to keep his blood flowing. Christmas is only a few days away, and he has no idea if Mario is going to be back to celebrate with his family, hasn’t texted or called him since that conversation with Mats, because he fears that every single word he sends Mario’s way might give him away. Not that he’s sure there’s something to give away just yet. He is still granting himself the benefit of the doubt, even though he really feels like ripping Toni’s head of and putting it into a grinder and – okay, he’s probably kidding himself.   
  
Nuri and Mats give him odd looks when he comes back inside with only five minutes remaining. Marco takes his place on the end of the couch and about ten seconds into extra time, Kießling heads the ball in, handing Bayern their second defeat this season. Marco should feel better about this, since Dortmund is leading the table by five points going into the break, but Mario’s head is bowed when he walks off the pitch, so Marco finds himself unable to smile.   
  
  
  
  
Christmas, as always, is a frantic affair and it appears to be getting more and more hectic each year. He’d spent his last Christmas break in Dubai, with Mario and some other friends, lying on the beach and getting drunk, so going back to a traditional family holiday proves to be difficult. By the time boxing day rolls around, Marco is ready to come up with any excuse to get out of dinner with his grandparents; another ounce of food and he is going to barf, he just knows it. It’s approaching evening and he still doesn’t have a decent alibi to explain his non-attendance, lounging on his couch in sweatpants and a t-shirt, when his doorbell rings. Marco is half-expecting it to be his mum, wearing a hideous reindeer jumper only she can pull of, but it’s not her, and Marco isn’t sure if he should curse the universe or embrace it.   
  
It’s Mario; face lobster-red from the cold outside and a black beanie pulled deep into his face. Marco can feel his jaw dropping.   
  
“Hi,” Mario says and Marco can’t say anything in return. His heart is in his fucking throat; beating so hard he fears it might be breaking through his skin any second. Mario holds up a small plastic case. “Reservoir Dogs?” he asks, because they both know there’s nothing like a Tarantino film to take off any edge and if he knows Mario as well as he thinks he does, then he’s equally stressed from family duties and festivities.  
  
Marco manages a weak smile and steps aside. “Sure,” he says, noticing his hairs standing on end as Mario peels himself out of his jacket and it absolutely should not look like a routine anymore, like this is something they do every day, because it used to be but not anymore. And Mario should not be moving through his flat like it’s his second home, finding glasses and something to drink and those damn peanuts Marco keeps buying although nobody eats them anymore.  
  
Mario takes his usual seat on the couch, moulds that damn cushion against his shoulder and smiles at Marco like this is the exact thing he’s been yearning to do for ages, as Marco’s mind treacherously supplies.   
  
“No Pulp Fiction?” He asks as he settles down on the other end.  
  
Mario grins widely. “John Travolta’s face is weird.”  
  
“ _Your_ face is weird,” Marco quips.   
  
“Shut up. You love my face.”  
  
And Marco can just stop himself from saying that he really does. It comes as a surprising sort of epiphany and he sits down on his hands to prevent the flailing he feels about to happen. He supposes he’s never thought about it much, the fact that he kind of does like Mario’s face. He’s always been fine with admitting that another guy can be attractive and that’s what Mario is, even if he does take his grooming too seriously from time to time (not that Marco is one to talk; he knows he’s obsessed with his hair). Now though, there is no product in his best friend’s hair and he is wearing an old pair of jeans, a hoodie. It makes Marco think about those rare moments when Mario isn’t aware of anyone watching him; when he scrunches up his nose in thought or chews on his lips, tilts his head slightly to one side or fiddles with the hem of his training kit. Moments when Marco, in the past, had actually stilled and looked at him in – no, not awe, but something that’s definitely not normal, that much he realises in retrospect.  
  
Marco completely misses the first scenes and Mr. Brown’s death and the shit that goes down in the warehouse between Eddie and Mr. Orange, because his mind has just disconnected and he can’t stop looking at Mario. It’s just confusing as fuck, because growing up and into his adolescence Marco has never had reason to doubt his sexuality for even a second. He is pretty sure he’s never had a single homoerotic dream and it’s not like he didn’t have the inspiration for it, considering that he’s definitely seen more naked guys than naked girls; it just comes with his profession. He is so deep into his internal monologue that he only belatedly realises that Mario is looking right back at him.   
  
“You okay?” he asks and Marco almost flinches. “Do I have something on my face?”  
  
He shakes himself mentally. “Dude, you don’t want me to answer that,” he replies and gives Mario a playful shove when he makes an exasperated face. “I won’t, don’t worry. How’s everything going by the way? Still – still good?” It probably speaks volumes about his desperation not to talk about Mario’s face anymore that he is willing to talk about Bayern Munich.   
  
“Yeah, I guess. Everyone’s a bit bloodthirsty already, you know? For the Champions League. And all the other titles. The team, not Pep. Maybe he just hides it better. It’s not good enough if it’s not winning, right?”  
  
“That’s bullshit,” Marco deadpans. “It’s not good enough if it’s not good enough. Sometimes others will just be better, even if you’re doing everything you can.”  
  
Mario shrugs. “Well, maybe then some people need to redefine _everything_.”  
  
The movie is still rolling in the background and Marco has half a mind to grab the remote to at least mute it. “You really think so? That why you left?” he asks and can’t quite believe how quickly the entire situation is slipping out of his grasp, turning sour. “You’re still going to lose occasionally. Even with the almighty Bayern Munich and Guardiola as coach.”  
  
Mario turns his body away from the TV, towards him and although they’re barely a foot width apart, Marco is starting to sense that the geographical distance is slowly creeping up on them, separating them in more ways than one.  
  
“That’s not why I left,” Mario says with an edge to his voice and they are both perfectly aware that neither of them likes to talk about this. “You know that. I told you.” He pauses. “You said you understand.”  
  
Marco swallows thickly, then lowers his gaze, fingers digging into the fabric of his trousers, suddenly irritating against his skin. “Well. Maybe I lied.”  
  
The silence that follows is thick and palpable. And it’s more uncomfortable than anything that’s ever happened between them. Even than the day Mario had told him of his decision. So perhaps this is long overdue. Perhaps this has been a slow and steady build-up and Marco is only now getting a hold of the effects, like a wave growing periodically before it hits the shore with utmost force.   
  
“I thought you weren’t angry,” Mario tells him quietly, and it takes a lot of air out of Marco; not all, but a considerate amount and suddenly, he finds it unbearable to sit still, so he gets up and starts pacing, which is most likely counterproductive and not calming in the slightest, but Marco has to move or else he is going to go insane.   
  
“I’m not angry,” he replies almost desperately, because this isn’t anger. Anger he can deal it; anger he can understand. But this has moved so far beyond his understanding that Marco is at a complete loss. “And I don’t understand, okay? I don’t understand a lot right now. I don’t get why you fucking left in the first place and I don’t get what you’re on about now. I mean,” and he needs to take a deep breath before he turns back around to face Mario, who is still frozen in place on the couch. “What do you expect me to do? What do you want me to say? I don’t know. You _left_.”  
  
Maybe he feels betrayed; that could be that bitter taste in his mouth. Robbed of the chance to play together, grow as footballers, take over Europe and the World in a year’s time. All right, so Marco didn’t know it then, but he thinks now he’d always had this foreboding feeling that they had the chance to become so much more, together, and if he is just beginning to grasp the extent of that – well, fuck. It feels like _too late_.  
  
“I don’t know either,” Mario breaks the silence eventually. Marco’s head is spinning. “But – I guess I should go.”  
  
Marco doesn’t want him to. But he doesn’t say anything to him. When the door slams shut behind a few horribly stretched out seconds, he crumbles and presses the back of his hands to his burning eyes.

 

 

He spends New Year’s with his family, because he doesn’t feel much like celebrating. His mother prods when she realises he’s in a bad mood, but she doesn’t push. She also doesn’t say anything when he heads home before one o’clock. When Marco gets back to his flat, he lies in bed, reads and answers a few well-wishers and he stays awake for the rest of the night, trying to decide whether texting Mario is a good idea. In the end, he doesn’t. He figures Mario probably wouldn’t want him to.  
  
The break ends and if Marco is being honest, he was more rested before than after. He doesn’t tell anyone about his bust-up with Mario, even though he guesses that Mats and Nuri might be suspecting something happened. He guesses everyone suspects something, because he can’t really hide his bad mood anymore. He continues his decent form (he says decent because he would be better if –), so that is not a problem. The ninety minutes he’s on the pitch every week are the only time when he feels normal and focused. As soon as he steps off it, it’s like his mind scatters into a million different pieces that slip through his fingers whenever Marco tries to hold onto them. He thinks most of these pieces are part of his sanity and he tries not to freak out even more than he already is.   
  
Not freaking the fuck out kind of comes to an end just before their first knockout match against PSG, because one morning, he wakes up to the worst hard-on he’s ever woken up to and he might not remember all the details of his dream, but he’s pretty sure that his best friend going down on him featured majorly. If there had even been the slightest doubt on Marco’s part, it’s wiped away when he takes care of his morning problem in the shower and almost comes with Mario’s name on his lips.   
  
  
  
  
In February, they draw against PSG at home, which is shit, quite frankly, because they concede a penalty that absolutely isn’t one five minutes before the final whistle blows. The next evening, against his better judgement, he watches Bayern beat Manchester City 1-0. Mario is taken off as a precaution in the 50th minute after a late challenge by Kompany and he also gets that look in his eyes that the camera doesn’t manage to catch but Marco knows it’s there and he knows perfectly that Mario is silently seething and that the first thing he’ll do back in the locker room is throw his water bottle against a wall with a curse. He knows that some of his new teammates will probably attempt to talk to him afterwards, because it is common knowledge that Mario doesn’t react well to any sort of injury, no matter how small (it takes him back to the months he couldn’t do anything at all and had to watch as his team won everything without him). It is not common knowledge that there is no getting through to him for the first couple of hours. He needs a while to cool down and if he needs to talk, he will start talking. Other than Marco, Mario has always seemed perfectly _aware_ of himself. Marco isn’t sure if that’s the right way of putting it.   
  
It’s stupid that he is thinking about this now, when he hasn’t spoken to Mario in a month, which might easily be the longest period of time they haven’t been in contact in the past couple of years. Which is hard for Marco, simply because there are habits that are hard to break. His fingers keep typing messages to Mario and only a few seconds into writing does he remember they’re not talking.  
  
But Marco is aware that will inevitably change soon, because there is a friendly coming up, and neither of them is injured. It’s fucking 2014 and Brazil is happening in a few months, which is something he can’t wrap his brain around, and Jogi is sure to put the squad through some test runs. They just play better when they play together, and everyone knows it, including their National Coach. Marco tries not to read too much into it.  
  
The five point gap between Dortmund and Bayern remains, because they lose against Leverkusen and Bayern against Frankfurt. It is probably not the best sort of satisfaction he feels at that, but Marco feels satisfied nonetheless. Their defensive issues of last season turn into minor slip-ups, but it’s not anything Kloppo will lose any sleep over. Nuri is back to his best and improving and Marco sometimes wonders how it would be if – but then he stops himself. It wouldn’t change a thing anyway.   
  
  
  
  
So, in March, Marco gets called up for the friendly against England. So do Mario and the other usual suspects, because time for experimentation is over and the team needs to get to know one another as well as possible. Jogi wants them to spend a week together around the match, teambuilding and all that, which makes sense, Marco assumes, but it’s not exactly something he looks forward to given his current… dilemma. He asks Mats beforehand to room with him, which most definitely confirms his friend’s theory that Marco and Mario did indeed have a fight, but Mats agrees nevertheless. Considering Mats is the only one who actually _knows_ – it’s a good idea on all fronts.  
  
He pointedly ignores the odd looks _everyone_ gives him when he and Mario don’t greet each other. André asks immediately what’s going on and Marco guesses he understates the situation by answering they only had a minor disagreement. It was only a disagreement, that much is true, but there was and is nothing minor about it; quite the contrary. But André takes his answer, for now, although his eyes keep flickering between them, like he’s trying to re-tie any strings that might have been cut loose. Jogi raises one eyebrow at Marco when he chooses a seat far away from Mario when they talk tactics and Marco can tell the team’s holding back their questions when he teams up with Mesut during their first practice session. From time to time, his neck will start to burn and prickle and when he subconsciously turns his head, he finds Mario just lowering his again.   
  
Perhaps he is imagining it though, Mario looking for him, because he seems fine hanging out with Toni, of course. Marco wouldn’t go as far as calling himself jealous, but he doesn’t like it. He has no right to feel like that and maybe Mario already has some girlfriend in Munich that Marco doesn’t know about because he didn’t ask when they were still talking.   
  
His avoidance tactic doesn’t flourish though, because it simply can’t. They are supposed to be a team and any bad blood between them has a rippling effect on everyone, and Jogi senses it, like a bloodhound. Marco remembers when Manu and Bene had been fighting, or rather, when Bene had been bitter over Manu leaving Schalke (maybe he and Marco should have a chat), and Jogi had used his authority as Coach to make them get their shit together. Marco doesn’t know what he’d done exactly, but it’d worked wonders. Anyway, of course Jogi pairs them up eventually and forces them to play together, because that is what the coaching staff has been grooming them for; perhaps not exactly become what Xavi and Iniesta are for Spain, but something similar.   
  
He faces Mario with an uneasy smile that is almost identical in its return. They play five-a-side on a quarter of the pitch, another group on the other half, goalies working with Andy. It takes a few minutes to get used to him again, but the connection is instant, like it’d been when Marco had joined Dortmund; hardly any warming up necessary, they just collided and it sparked. Marco thinks it’s almost cruel how quickly they’re back in the normal trot.   
  
When Jogi calls it quits, Marco realises that there is another step to their coach’s plan to get them back on good terms. He shoos their teammates off and tells him and Mario to collect the cones splattered across the training pitch. Marco bows his head, moves to one side while Mario moves to the other, but eventually, they both end up in the same spot, looking at each other and they simply can’t avoid each other anymore. His heart is pounding in his throat and Marco’s knees feel weak like his body is desperately trying to fulfil every fucking cliché in the book. This time, it’s Mario who smiles first, or rather, tries to. His hair is shorter than it’d been after Christmas, but it still curls into his forehead.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
“Hey,” Marco replies, barely finding his voice.  
  
He can see Mario rolling the words over his tongue before he eventually says, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Me too,” Marco replies and doesn’t hide his sigh of relief.   
  
  
  
  
They destroy England. It’s just a friendly, but it’s clear that the entire teams wants to send a clear message. They’re not taking prisoners, and this is _their_ year. Marco scores two and Mario puts the third in past Joe Hart with a freekick that would put Andrea Pirlo to shame, and Marco tells him as much after. Mario shrugs it off with a smile and their shoulders bump as they take seats next to each other on the bus.   
  
  
  
  
Marco goes back to Dortmund and Mario returns to Munich, and he finds himself in the same position as before, with the little plus that they’re not officially fighting anymore. But Marco’s problem very much remains, and Mats helpfully points it out for him, adding, “Have you thought about telling him?”  
  
“No,” Marco answers instantly. “Why on earth would I do that? I plan to sit this out, wait until it goes away.”  
  
“Doesn’t seem to be working so far.”  
  
Marco rubs his forehead. “I’m working on it.”  
  
Mats has the nerve to snort out a laugh. “Well, let me know how that’s going.”  
  
Sometimes he’s a real dick.  
  
  
  
  
The league continues and they draw against Schalke of all clubs, allowing Bayern to shrink the gap to a miniscule three points. They are still in the running for the German Cup, they are in the Champions League quarter final, so things could generally be going much worse, Kloppo keeps telling them. They get Manchester United and hang on to a 0-0 at home by the skin of their teeth. Apart from theirs, every other game is drenched with goals. AC Milan and Real Madrid part with 3-3 and Barcelona, in some ironic, Karma-induced row, destroy Chelsea 5-1 at Stamford Bridge (he thinks they have something to prove this season). What kind of shocks Marco, and probably a lot of people, is that Bayern lose to Juventus at home; 2-0. It’s certainly not over yet, but after last year, after two 3-0 wins, it comes as a surprise.   
  
Mario calls him almost in the middle of the night and doesn’t say a single word. Marco just starts talking and tells him about his week, about Leo and Kevin hiding all of their shoes after training and watching the new Captain America movie with Tele. They both fall asleep with their phones pressed against their ears, and when Marco wakes up at the crack of dawn, he does so with a stiff neck, but with Mario’s steady breathing on the other end of the line.   
  
A week later, they beat Manchester United 1-0. It is such a close match that Marco feels unable to calm down for hours after, giddy with tension. There is no miracle for Bayern Munich. They play 1-1, and Juventus goes through. He’s watching it with the boys at Nuri’s and Marco doesn’t care about the club, and he doesn’t care about Hoeneß’s face turning as red as a tomato in his anger. But he cares about Mario, lying on the pitch, eyes red and looking so utterly defeated, brushing off anyone who tries to get close and comfort him.   
  
He stills and his heart freezes and a warm hand on his shoulder makes him flinch.  
  
“You should call him,” Nuri says and Marco needs to take a steadying breath.  
  
“What, now?”  
  
“Maybe give him an hour?” Schmelle quips and gets up, presumably to get another drink.   
  
Marco sits frozen to the spot before life returns to his body and he heads out into Nuri’s garden, shuts the door again and lets his eyes wander. It’s pretty warm for early April and there is that smell in the air that he categorises as spring but can’t actually describe. Mario always says it smells like the sun, and Marco’s usual reply is that the sun can’t really smell like anything. It’s dark anyway, so it sure as hell isn’t that right now. And he has no idea what his head is doing, thinking about this entirely irrelevant stuff. He starts walking across the lawn, dodging toys, towards the set of swings and sits down on one of them, moving back and forth until the last sliver of light has disappeared behind the line of trees framing the property. Then he gets out his phone. His fingers hover over the screen before he finally gives up and presses the first number on his speed-dial.   
  
Mario is surprisingly quick to answer. _“Calling to rub it in?”_  
  
Marco stops short. “What? No, I – fuck, why would you say that?”  
  
He’s probably shrugging. _“No idea. Isn’t that what you told me? That I would lose eventually? Because this feels like the biggest fucking irony right now.”_ His voice sounds thin; Marco is sure he must be exhausted and completely worn out. There aren’t any background noises and Marco wonders where Mario is right now.  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, because it’s the truth. “And it’s not your fault, all right? We all watched and you were great a week ago and you were great just now. But – sometimes others are just better on a certain day.”  
  
 _“Still sucks.”_  
  
“I know,” Marco admits and continues to move again, swinging his legs back. “There’s always next year, though, right? And the World Cup, don’t forget that. And in Brazil, I’ll be there too and we can both make sure we won’t lose this time, okay? We’ll show them.”  
  
It’s quite for a bit, before Marco can hear a heavy sigh. _“Okay. Yeah, you’re right. I just – I don’t know. I’m confused, I guess. It’s not really… turning out the way I thought it would.”_  
  
Well, duh, Marco almost throws back at Mario, but this isn’t the time and place to be a bitter asshole. “Patience is a virtue,” he says instead. “You’ll be fine. Maybe you just need a break. I know I need one. Are you coming to the Benders’ birthday party?”  
  
 _“When’s that?”_  
  
“Three weeks,” Marco replies, scraping over dirt with his sneakers. He knows they’re Mario’s now. Just like two hoodies he’s found in his hallway cupboard. He plans to return them – eventually. “I think they invited everyone. The guys from Leverkusen, us, the National tea. Should be nice.”  
  
Mario clears his throat and when he speaks again, his voice sounds steadier. _“Sure. Sure, I’ll come.”_ He sighs again. _“Listen, I got to go, bus is waiting, but – thanks. I don’t… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”_  
  
Marco’s heart leaps painfully. He already has no clue what he’s doing.  
  
  
  
  
They get Barcelona in the draw. Mario texts him _Nice one ;)_ after apparently regaining his crappy sense of humour and Marco is weighing his decision on whether he’s looking forward to the matches or not. He wants the final and he wants the title for a second time; he’d joked about wanting the Treble at the beginning of the season, and that is a serious possibility now. But he is also aware that Barcelona have been virtually indestructible since they signed Agüero and they sure as hell want their own Treble as well.   
  
The first leg is at home. The fans, as always, reduce Marco to a puddle of goosebumps. He remember playing Real Madrid and showing them their place and how great it’d felt, but as soon as the first five minutes are played, he realises that this is going to be very different. They’re used to a lot of possession, of controlling the ball, and most of the time, they control the ball when it’s not in their possession as well. But this is Barcelona and they need a different approach and it doesn’t seem like their plan has been set in proper motion in the first half. Marco has a couple of one-on-one’s with Alba, who is so fucking fast that he gets the upper hand on most of them, and the backline has trouble containing Messi, Agüero and Villa at the same time. The team is lucky to be awarded a free kick from a dangerous position, but then Marco shoots just inches wide and they get under the wheels again. Before halftime, Agüero splits Mats and Neven and Villa brushes the ball past them and into the back of the net.   
  
It gets better in the second half and Marco wonders if luck is on their side when Mats jumps just fractions higher than anyone else and heads it in after a corner from Nuri. But it’s probably not about luck, because when in-form, the Messi factor proves to be too much for most teams and it proves too much for them on this day. Messi scores in the 80th minute and turns the return leg at Barcelona into a mountain to climb.  
  
Mario calls him after.   
  
“We can still turn this around, right?” Marco asks him.  
  
Being the best friend that he is (the best friend he is so utterly and stupidly in love with, as he is now growing to accept), Mario says, “Sure you can.”  
  
  
  
  
They don’t turn it around. They get beaten 3-1 and it might not be the highest defeat of Marco’s career, but he still feels pretty shit about it. Mario rings him when he’s waiting at the gate, headphones on, and he watches his phone buzzing in his palm, but he doesn’t answer; doesn’t answer because all he can think about how different thing’s could have turned out if Mario hadn’t left. He’s not being fair, he is being completely irrational, and he doesn’t want to take it out on Mario, so he shoves his phone into his backpack and tries to drown everything out for a while.  
  
  
  
  
The place is packed. Bursting at the seams. Marco has no clue who had told Lars and Sven that Sven’s flat would be big enough to host their birthday party. Perhaps they thought it would do because the season is not over and their coaches would kill them if they showed up with a hangover. But it seems like they’ve already forgotten, because when Marco arrives with Leo and Tele, half an hour late, the birthday boys are already pretty hammered. It’s great though; it really is, because they rarely get together like this, at least not during the season. Marco had assumed that the Champions League exit would put a damper on the mood, but it’s quite cleansing and it makes him stop thinking about it.  
  
Mario walks in an hour late. With Toni. He feels the need to tell his own treacherous brain that he likes Toni, as a person, and he smiles when they greet each other and all is forgotten for a few blissful moments when Mario hugs him harder and perhaps a bit longer than necessary (that might only be in his mind). There’s the usual exchange of pleasantries and they pointedly avoid talking about football, since there is still one league match and the Cup final between Dortmund and Bayern, and perhaps Marco has been thinking a lot about Mario, in ways he doesn’t particularly want anybody to know, but he’s been playing with the idea of telling Mario, not straight-forward but perhaps just talk about this mess in his head.  
  
But he can’t get Mario on his own, because Toni is glued to him, leaning onto him, hands on Mario’s shoulder and arm and back and whispering into his ear. It’s driving him mad, and he can’t believe it, but he is actually _jealous_. He doesn’t think he’d be jealous if Mats or Nuri were in Toni’s place, but then again – Marco has never been confronted with Mario being something like best friends with someone else.   
  
It’s ridiculous, but he does try to hide in the crowd, because he can’t watch it all night, not even understanding why this is suddenly getting into his head, settling down and growing roots. He’s avoiding Mats too, who is wearing a particularly annoying brand of smug look on his face. None of it makes a lot of sense to him; it’s one thing finding out that platonic feelings can unknowingly evolve into romantic ones, but that is no excuse for getting angry with guys who still have perfectly platonic feelings for Mario and genuinely want to be his friend. He can’t do anything but sit on his feelings, so Mats can shove it too.   
  
His mood is dampened suddenly, and maybe he drinks more than he should, considering they only have tomorrow off. Finishing off his glass off whatever-the-hell-Tele-put-in-it, he steps out onto the balcony, doesn’t close the door behind him (fresh air has never harmed anyone), and can’t help but be surprised that Mario has followed him. And Mario is a direct person; he doesn’t beat around the bush.   
  
He asks, “Are you avoiding me?” and Marco fixes his eyes onto his sneakers.  
  
“No. Why’re you asking?”  
  
“Because you’ve been avoiding me all night?”  
  
Marco sighs. “I wasn’t trying to do that.”  
  
“Sure as hell seemed like it,” Mario says and steps closer, making Marco look up again. He’s clad in dark jeans and a black t-shirt, which is unusually simple for him, but he looks good in it. Far too good, if Marco is being honest, watching the light from inside reflect on the tanned expanse of Mario’s neck and collarbones. “You didn’t answer when I called the other day either. You’re just acting weird. Did I, I don’t know – do something? Other than leaving?” and he sounds a bit frustrated, reasonably so, because Marco is accidentally acting like a dick.  
  
“It’s not about that,” he ends up saying. Perhaps Mario leaving has been the trigger, but that’s it.   
  
“Then what is it?”   
  
He is so close that Marco is so tempted to just lean in, but he forces himself to stay still. “I’m sorry, I just – I can’t tell you, okay?”  
  
“That’s bullshit,” Mario replies. “Of course you can.”  
  
“I can’t,” he blurts out and represses a groan. There is music echoing out towards them and his head is swimming from that nasty drink Tele had handed him. “I don’t even know what’s going on, okay?” and he guesses it’s only half a lie, all things considered. “You didn’t do anything, and I am not angry or anything, but – I messed up and I’m trying to get a grip. I’m fine, it’s just… confusing.”  
  
“Okay,” Mario says, letting his hands slide into the pockets of his jeans. “If you say so.”  
  
  
  
  
Marco has gotten to know himself a bit more over that past year. He’s come to understand that he handles pressure just fine, actually strives under it and the harder he works, the more he gets, the more ambitious he becomes. He finds it easy to want more and there is not a lot that makes him truly upset, but when it happens, he’s got a temper, a short fuse. And apparently, he is not as straight as he always thought. That’s all fine. What he struggles with is the realisation that he is a coward.  
  
  
  
As soon as Marco is home, he starts pacing. Mats – designated driver of the night – had dropped him off with a pointed look and although it’s already early morning, Marco doesn’t even think of going to sleep. He thinks Mario is already on his way back to Munich and that they won’t see each other until the Cup final in a few weeks, and after that the World Cup is already knocking on their front door. Marco feels sick when he thinks about keeping that lump in his chest down for the next couple of months until it goes away – if it ever does. He can’t imagine not missing Mario anymore and he figures that all his feelings are tied together somehow.  
  
On a whim, he grabs his phone, proving that he has turned into a massive coward, but he just doesn’t know what else to do. It goes straight to voicemail.  
  
“Ugh, hey,” he starts, silently knocking his own forehead against the door of his fridge. “Listen, I just wanted to apologise, you know, for… being an idiot, I guess? I meant it though; it’s nothing to do with you, at least not, um. Well, it’s got something to do with you, but it’s not your fault. It’s all on me. And I didn’t want to tell you, because I don’t want to screw up,” and he breathes, deeply; fills his lungs with air that is immediately sucked out of him again by the anxiety rushing through his body. “I’ve been acting like an idiot a lot lately, just ask the guys, but it’s – it’s been hard without you here and I knew I was going to miss you, but I didn’t realise –”  
  
And he breaks off, because he’s pretty sure this is nuts and he is going insane, but he’s also certain that if he doesn’t get it all out now, he never will. And keeping it all bottled up is slowly starting to feel like being eaten alive.  
  
“Jesus, I just… I miss you a lot. Probably more than I should. And – I never told you, but I’ve been hanging out with Caro again and I thought I wanted her back, and there was a lot of confusion, but basically… Basically she told me that she’d broken up with me because of you. And that she wouldn’t take me back, because of you and I didn’t get it then but… But I think I get it now.”  
  
He breathes again, then he hangs up, turns his back to his fridge and slides down onto the floor.   
  
  
  
  
Marco only notices that he has fallen asleep when the shrill buzz of his doorbell startles him and he almost has a heart attack before he registers what is actually happening. His mouth feels weird and he is generally still off balance, he notices as much when he attempts to get to his feet. He has no idea who could be coming over at… eight in the morning on his off day and he struggles with his own feet on the way over to his front door. He yanks it open, and it’s Mario who standing on the other side. Marco’s heart plummets down to his feet as it dawns on him.   
  
Mario is breathing hard and fast like he just ran here and perhaps he did and wasn’t he supposed to be a few hundred kilometres away from here already? There is something about the way he looks at Marco that tightens and twists his chest.  
  
“I thought,” he starts, lips still a little numb and mind not up to par with what’s going on around him. “I thought you were on your way back.”  
  
Mario shakes his head. It’s a jerky movement and he walks around Marco and into the hallway, stiffly and softly shaking. Marco closes the door more out of instinct and not really consciously.   
  
“I went to my parents’. Been a few months since I last saw them. Toni’s still there. We’re driving to Munich this afternoon.”  
  
“Right,” Marco says, more to himself, almost rigid with tension. “So I figure you –”  
  
“Yeah,” Mario cuts him off, and turns around. “Yeah, I got your message,” and Marco can’t read him at all this moment. It might have something to do with the fact that he is freaking out. He knows Mario would have checked his voicemail sooner or later and that had been the point, in a way; but Marco hadn’t expected him to show up out of nowhere.   
  
“Okay.” Marco runs a hand over his face, trying to get rid of all remaining sleep and nausea. “Listen, Mario, I –”  
  
“No.” Mario doesn’t let him continue. And suddenly, he looks almost angry. Marco thinks this might be it; fucked it up beyond repair. “You listen. Did you mean that? What you said? Because you don’t get to say this shit and not mean it, all right? You don’t.” His throat moves and it appears that Mario has been struggling with a lump blocking his chest too. “Fuck, I don’t even – like, I have no idea if you actually meant what I think you did and you told me you were confused… Well, I am confused as fuck now, okay? I feel like a fucking idiot, but you’re my best friend and this has been the hardest season of my life and –”  
  
“I don’t want to be your best friend.”  
  
Mario stops short, and stares at him wide-eyed. “What?”  
  
Marco swallows. “I don’t want to be your best friend,” he repeats with more certainty in his voice, looking straight at Mario, because it’s too late to back down now. It’s out in the open, and it’s a relief. “I mean, yes I do, but – but I think I want to be more than that.”  
  
For some reason, Marco waits for lightning to strike, for thunder to roar, for anything at all to happen, even if it’s Mario smacking him across the face. But nothing happens. They’re both frozen to the spot and Mario is gaping at him and continues to do so for what feels like hours while Marco wants nothing more than for the earth to open up and swallow him whole. He has no such luck. Eventually, Mario shakes himself out of his stupor, moves back and then forward slightly, fists curling and uncurling like he wants to do something with his hands but doesn’t know what.  
  
“I can’t,” Mario starts again, seemingly choking on his own voice, pulling almost helplessly at the hem of his shirt. “I can’t do this right now.” And he brushes past Marco faster than he can react and slams the door shut behind his retreating form.  
  
Marco is left standing in the hallway, feeling more lost and helpless than ever before in his life. He’s got nothing left to say. And there is nothing he can do.  
Still, he tries to call Mario, but it goes straight to voicemail again. He tries Toni, too, and he doesn’t answer his phone either.  
  
  
  
  
“I think I told him,” he tells Mats the next day. He feels drained and exhausted and he hasn’t slept for a single second.   
  
Mats stops in his tracks, looks at Marco like he’s grown a second head while he is slowing down as well. “You _think_?”  
  
“Yeah well,” Marco shrugs, “I wasn’t that specific, but I think he got the picture. He left.”  
  
“He left? What did you say?”  
  
Marco throws a quick look over his shoulder. Feels like something he’s got to get used to. “Kind of told him I wanted to be more than friends. And he left. So – I guess I fucked that up.”  
  
This time, Mats doesn’t repeat anything like a parrot. He simply stares at Marco, curls long enough to fall into his eyes and he is not that much older, but somehow he suddenly seems wise, looking at Marco like some young fledgling and this is freakishly feeling a lot like Star Wars and Yoda and the Force and – he needs sleep.  
  
“You need to talk to him,” Mats says eventually.  
  
“Yeah, somehow I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marco replies, even if the sheer thought of never talking to Mario again is making him feel sick to the core.   
  
“Marco,” Mats almost barks at him and okay, wow. He must’ve missed something. “I am not asking you to, I am _telling_ you. Talk to him.”   
  
  
  
  
She is utterly beautiful. She always had been beautiful in his eyes and she always will be. His mother had told him right at the beginning of their relationship that it was her good heart shining through, and that he should consider himself lucky, because she was so clearly out of his league (not that his mother had meant it in a bad way, but it had been the truth nonetheless). Marco does get it know, how he is suddenly getting so many things he’s been ignorant about, unintentionally; that they weren’t meant to last, simply because she deserves more. She deserves everything really, and Marco understands that it had hurt at the time, because he hadn’t been able to give it to her. Maybe they have both moved on, but Marco still feels the need for some sort of closure.  
  
“Why did you break up with me?” he asks Caro, not knowing the answer, but having more than a hunch about the reason.  
  
Caro looks at him and it’s probably a bit late to ask her that; too late for any sort of reaction, because Marco hadn’t reacted that much initially. She sighs, and it sounds like she’s been waiting for that question. “Because I didn’t want to compete with him,” she says like it’s the most normal reason in the world, like it didn’t throw her off then and doesn’t throw her off now. “Because I knew I couldn’t. Because you didn’t even notice.”  
  
“I think I notice now,” Marco says quietly. “Why aren’t you angry with me? Even last year, you didn’t –”  
  
“Why would I be angry?” Caro interrupts him instantly. “I was upset. Of course. But – why be angry and make you and me miserable about something neither of us can really change? We had a good run, but sometimes things don’t work out. I don’t want to waste time being bitter when nobody is to blame.”  
  
“You are –”  
  
“Amazing,” she grins and winks. “So I’ve heard.”  
  
Marco can’t help but reach out and take her hand, because his throat feels tight and his eyes start burning and he really didn’t deserve her and he probably doesn’t deserve to call her a friend now. “No, Caro. Seriously. I just – I mean, I can’t believe you didn’t stab me through the eyeball or something.”  
  
She interlaces their fingers and squeezes. “Oh, you know me. Bloodstains. Tend to ruin the carpet.”  
  
Marco laughs, because this is exactly why he fell for her almost five years ago. Caro tugs at his hand and makes him look at her again.  
  
“Do me a favour, okay? Man up. Show some balls. Because I know you have them.”  
  
She’s always had a way with words.  
  
  
  
  
So, Marco tries to show some balls; calls Mario repeatedly over the course of a few days. There are three league games left to play, so he knows Mario hasn’t disappeared from the face of the earth. His entire week consists of training, calling Mario, and receiving sideway glances from the guys. They play Wolfsburg and win at the same time that Bayern lose to Freiburg. And just like that, Marco wins his first league title.   
  
It should feel more exciting. It might take a while for it to sink in. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he gets a text saying _Congrats_ from Mario that is so generic he probably sent it to everyone.   
  
Kloppo gives them all a solid hug and clap on the back and Dortmund explodes in yellow and black, but their coach is quick to remind them that they need to finish this season in style, and by beating Bayern Munich in the German Cup final in three weeks.  
  
  
  
  
So Marco goes to practice, trains, goes home, calls, and ends up getting the mailbox. Again. He can’t quite believe his bad luck. So he leaves his phone on the counter in the kitchen and has a shower, because practice was hard and it’s getting warmer again and everything is sticking to him in places he never wants anything to be stuck ever. When he returns, he sees that he’s got a missed call from Mario and curses.  
He picks it up again and presses it to his ear.  
  
 _“Hello?”_  
  
He blinks, because that’s not Mario. “Um, hi? Toni?”  
  
 _“Yeah,”_ Toni says on the other end of the line, nothing else.  
  
“Um,” Marco says, “I did get the number right, didn’t I?”  
  
 _“Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ve got Mario’s phone.”_  
  
“You have his phone,” he can’t help but repeat and there it is again, that bitter twinge in his gut. Oh jealousy, thou art a heartless prick.   
  
_“Yeah,”_ Toni says as if it is nothing. _“I actually called you. I mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”_  
  
Marco freezes. “What idea would that be?”  
  
Toni laughs but Marco doesn’t find this funny at all. This just feels downright weird. He thinks he’s missed something.  
  
 _“Oh come on, I don’t need to spell it out for you, do I? Mario told me, no need to freak out. I thought I’d welcome you to the club.”_  
  
It still doesn’t dawn on him, even if Marco knows it should be easy to get, but he just doesn’t. He can’t but stand in his kitchen and gape at nothing and nobody. “What club?”   
  
Silence. Then, _“Dude, do you really not know?”_  
  
“Know what? What club?” because Marco is getting kind of pissed off now. He feels like a fool, because somehow, everyone is turning out to be some sort of know-it-all while Marco is rapidly becoming the village idiot.  
  
 _“The gay club,”_ Toni says calmly, quietly, almost lightly but with enough seriousness that leaves no room for misunderstandings. _“Well,”_ he adds with a breathy laugh, _“it’s not really a club, but you get what I mean.”_  
  
And Marco is in his kitchen, feet solidly on the floor, and yet somehow still feels like he’s falling fast. His heart is pounding so loudly against his ribcage that he’s pretty sure Toni can hear it beating all the way through the phone.  
  
 _“I thought,”_ Toni starts again when he realises Marco has been stunned into muteness. _“I thought you knew, man. If not about me, then at least about Mario. He said that some teammates know and I’d just assumed that you – I mean, you’re best friends, how did you –“_  
  
How did he not know. Marco feels sick and dizzy and he has to lean forward, grab the counter tightly with slippery fingers while his mind is racing, spinning and he’s tumbling down the rabbit hole. Marco almost expects an epiphany. Some aha-moment where he sees everything clearer and all slots in to place and he understands where he’d gone wrong, at what point he’d overseen and misjudged but – nothing. There is not a single moment in the past years he’s known Mario that would make him stop in his tracks because – because it’d seemed all normal to him. And Jesus, that makes him sound like a dick and a homophobe and he is not, he doesn’t really believe in stereotypes but… Mario just never told him. And Marco didn’t see. Suddenly, he feels like a really shit friend.  
  
“Oh fuck,” he mutters, more to himself than to Toni, who’s gone quiet and serious.   
  
_“Fuck,”_ Toni echoes. _“Shit, calm down, okay. Please? Don’t freak out. Jesus, you guys - you guys really need to talk.”_  
  
Marco tries to keep his breath even. “I don’t think he wants to talk to me.”  
  
 _“Doesn’t matter,”_ Toni deadpans. _“When’s your next day off?”_  
  
“Sunday.”  
  
 _“Okay. Then just – drive here or get your ass on a plane, because neither of you should hang up when it’s tricky. Mario’s seeing our physio right now, and I won’t tell him you’re coming so just – don’t freak out, though that’s probably easier said than done. Man, what a mess.”_  
  
When Toni hangs up, Marco isn’t sure what just hit him.  
  
  
  
  
He asks Kloppo for an extra day off after the match against Nuremberg. His coach just raises a brow at him and Marco isn’t sure why, but it makes his heart drop and he stutters, desperately trying to come up with a reason that isn’t far away from the truth but not exactly the truth and he fails, tragically, throwing words into the narrow space between them on the side of the training pitch. Eventually Kloppo sighs heavily, sounding a lot like his dad.   
  
“I’m getting too old for this,” he says more to himself than to Marco. “It’s not rocket science, boys. I don’t know why you act like it is,” and Marco can’t really follow, but then Kloppo puts a hand on his forehead and squints. “Yup, definitely higher temperature there. You should probably go; stay at home tomorrow as well. Don’t want you passing it on to the others.”   
  
Then he makes a shooing motion with his hands and it takes Marco a few seconds to realise that his coach has provided a small loophole for him. He doesn’t think any further than that, because Kloppo must know something, he always know everything and more and there are probably one or two awkward conversation Marco has waiting for him once he gets back from Munich.  
  
Because he does go home and without second thought, he grabs Mario’s hoodies, throws them onto the backseat and starts driving. He thinks about turning back more time than he can count. He looks at every exit thinking he should probably take it. Just after Würzburg, he has to stop for petrol and Marco hopes nobody recognizes him while he has a quiet but nonetheless major freak-out in the parking lot, because the official statement on him being absent from the next training session is a nasty cold, not trying to – well. Marco doesn’t really know what he’s trying to do. There is what Mario had said to him before he’d just disappeared; but more than that, he is thinking about Toni’s words.   
  
Gay club. It’s not like he didn’t know. He’s been a professional football player long enough to have met a couple of guys who weren’t exclusively straight and it’s never been a problem and it’s not a problem _now_ , just – he just can’t believe he didn’t know; didn’t realise it at all. Marco thinks he’s had enough time to come to terms with his feelings, but he had done so thinking he would just have to repress them in front of his very straight best friend. Now – Marco tries not to think too far. His game plan right for the moment consists of getting to Munich in one piece and without creating an accident with the way he’s driving.   
  
He doesn’t get into any bad traffic, but it still takes him five and a half hours to get to Munich, and he spends twenty minutes just sitting inside his car outside Mario’s flat, watching the hand of his watch crawl past eleven. It’s dark, but there is warm light spilling onto the street from various windows. Marco is clutching to Mario’s hoodies like the pathetic loser he’s being right now, lacking every ounce of courage he possesses, which is apparently not much to begin with. He toys with the idea of calling Mats, or Nuri, or even Toni, because he doesn’t know what to do or say to get out of the hole he dug himself. Marco doesn’t know what to say or do and he hasn’t had a clue for a while and he is perfectly aware that he is working himself up and waiting is not calming him down, because he starts imagining every possible outcome to this, each more awful than the one before.   
  
But it’s no use. He is delaying the inevitable and he does have balls, so he holds on to the sweatshirts, pulls the key out of the ignition and steps out onto the street. It’s still hot, unusually hot for May in fact, and after sitting in an air-conditioned car for almost six hours, Marco’s shirt sticks to his chest immediately and he pulls at it to get some air onto his skin. Then he walks to the front door. It’s slightly ajar, probably to get some circulation going in the stairwell. Mario’s flat is on the second floor, and Marco’s knees are close to buckling and his heart is thundering in his chest. When he comes to stand in front or Mario’s front door, he takes no less than ten deep breaths, sounding like he just ran a marathon, and lifts his shaking hand to knock.  
  
“Man, up,” he tells himself quietly.  
  
He hears commotion and then it’s too late to turn around and make a run for it. The door opens and Mario is just standing there and Marco can tell the exact second Mario realises who has just knocked on his door, just a slight tremor coursing through him and his eyes widening in shock and surprise. He’s in a loose fitting t-shirt and shorts, and for a moment, Marco is so tempted to reach out and pull him close and – and _do things_ to him. He tries to smile, but his face is frozen. So is Mario’s and they keep facing each other in silence with a tension so strained it seems to be slowing wringing all air out of Marco’s body.   
  
He clears his throat audibly and holds out the hoodies. “You left them at mine. Like, a while ago. I was meaning to give them back.”  
  
“Thanks,” Mario says and takes them tentatively, presses them to his chest like an anchor keeping him afloat. Marco kind of feels like he’s drowning too. “You want to come in?”  
  
“Sure,” Marco replies after a curt nod and follows Mario back inside. He’s been here before, which seems like forever ago now, but he’d been so far away mentally, so distracted by everything that he hadn’t really paid attention to anything. Now he lets his eyes wander around, takes in the flat that is new and modern but looks too structured for Mario; too organised and too generic. He’s not sure why he’s thought of that, but he’s always expected Mario’s first place to be more colourful and clustered, walls covered with exchanged jersey and photographs. This doesn’t really fit, Marco finds.   
  
He sits down in the living, relieved not to have to rely on his wobbly knees anymore, while Mario hovers, chewing on his lips, dropping the hoodies onto an armchair.   
  
“D’you want a drink?” he asks, fingers kneading his shirt now that he doesn’t have anything to hold onto anymore.  
  
“I’m good,” Marco says and watches as Mario sits down on the other end. He takes a steadying breath. “Look, I’m sorry if… if I just kind of dumped this stuff on you, but – we really need to talk.”  
  
Mario nods slowly. “Yeah, seems like we’re not really good at that.”  
  
“We are,” Marco disagrees. “Just not when it comes to the important stuff.”  
  
Mario knows what he means, that much Marco can tell. It’s still hideously tense and if Marco could, he would ball it all up into a pulp and kick it out the window. But he can’t and so they have to deal with this like actual adults.   
  
“I guess I should apologise too,” Mario says.  
  
“You don’t, I –”  
  
“No,” Mario cuts him off. “I do. I just – Toni told me you guys talked, okay? And… you’re my best friend. And I should have told you, but –” and he rubs his hands over his face, tugs at his hair, fidgets. “It’s not anything that I… mention casually, you know? And when we met, Jesus Christ, I just fell for you so hard and I didn’t want to make it awkward and then it was kind of too late and –”  
  
“What?” Marco thinks his chin drops onto his chest. “You – what?”  
  
Mario blinks. “You mean you…” and he trails off, shakes his head to himself. “Everything’s basically out in the open and you miss the most blatantly obvious detail?”  
  
“Apparently,” Marco only manages to choke out. He thinks his heart is literally trying to crawl up his throat.  
  
That actually tickles a smile out of Mario and Marco thinks he’s blushing; knows that he himself is probably as red as that horrid kit Mario now plays in.   
  
“The guys gave me so much shtick, you have no idea. They stopped, eventually, because it was kind of evil.”  
  
“Oh God, tell me about it,” Marco groans, thinking about Mats and his smug grin. No wonder he always looks so pleased with himself. “So what now?” he asks and there is something spreading in his chest, pleasantly warm and unfolding and pulling his heart back into its proper place. And he looks at Mario and – God, he just sees so much, and he has been missing most of it for too long and some even longer than he realised.   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Marco looks at their hands, brushing over the material of the couch, still with so much space in between that he’d have to move in order to take Mario’s. He wonders how it would feel like to slide his fingertips across Mario’s skin, knowing what it means now, how different it would be to before when everything had been easy banter and casual groping between friends. He feels shy, all of a sudden, about touching Mario, has been feeling like that for the better part of the season, whereas before he’d had no inhibition whatsoever.   
  
“I meant what I said,” he tells Mario, slowly regaining his confidence; slowly but steadily becoming surer that it’s either now or never, no matter how clichéd that sounds. “All of it. This year’s just been so confusing and I didn’t know what was going on half the time and I still don’t know what’s going on most of the time now. I felt like an idiot for most of the season and everyone seemed to know exactly what was wrong with me, and I’m sorry, I really am, that it took me fucking ages to get a grip of myself.” He pauses, but Mario doesn’t move, and he doesn’t say anything either.  
“This has been the hardest season of my life too, you know? Not because I got injured or we got kicked out of the Champions League, but because you weren’t there. And it… it just kind of killed me not to see you every day. I know, believe me I know, I should have said something sooner, I should have realised it sooner and it’s fucking awful timing and I don’t understand much, but if it’s one thing I’m sure about, it’s this.” He has to take a breath, has to calm his pulse, because this has been boiling inside his chest for the past months and the relief of letting it all out lifts such a big weight off his shoulders that Marco feels like he’s about to drift off.   
“You can tell me to fuck off, all right? That’s fine. I just – I needed you to know.”  
  
Honestly, Marco expects Mario to tell him to fuck off, and shove it, maybe get a grip. Awkward silence is also on the spectrum of possibilities. He’s gone through the options, numerable times, listed all the eventual consequences and Marco expects much. He doesn’t expect Mario to laugh and not stop for a solid minute. He’s not sure if that’s supposed to be unsettling him.  
  
“God, sorry,” Mario eventually manages to squeeze out, eyes sparkling and face flushed. “It’s just –” and he has to suppress another chuckle that is bubbling up in his throat. “It’s just that I spent _months_ trying to convince my mother that we weren’t dating. I’m not kidding. Months. She wouldn’t have it.”  
  
Marco’s heart does a twist. “So what are you saying?”  
  
“I’m saying,” Mario tells him with a smile, “that when it comes down to it, you’re doing the talking. Because I am _done_.”  
  
His cheeks twitch almost painfully, because Marco can’t suppress a smile of his own anymore. It feels like it’s been forever since he smiled like that and his face might need some time getting used to it again, because it hurts. It hurts in a good way though – oh God, in the best possible way. “I can live with that,” he says, hands still trembling. There is an invisible thread tugging at his sternum, an invisible hand between his shoulder blades, pushing him forward. “This… this won’t be awkward, right?”   
  
And then Mario’s foot is there, nudging his own. The smile on his face has a playful edge to it now, but his eyes are serious, sincere. “I think we left awkward behind a long time ago.”  
  
Then it’s silent. The only thing Marco can hear is his own heart pounding in his ears. Mario has moved imperceptibly closer and he can’t take it anymore, has to bridge the gap, close the distance, get near enough to reach out and intertwine their hands and lean in to –  
  
“I should probably –” he begins to mutter, but Mario cuts him off.  
  
“You better.”  
  
He lets their foreheads rest together for a moment, hot air circulating between them and Mario closes his eyes, so Marco mirrors him, concentrates on his other senses, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up and the soft bursts of heat trickling down his spine. Then it’s a brush of their noses, a hitched breath or two, and Marco licks his lips before tentatively, delicately, pressing them to Mario’s.   
  
It probably should be awkward, feel weird in some sort of way and Marco expects it to throw him off at first, despite having imagined doing this exact thing for a while now. But it’s not. Not even slightly. Their mouths slide together almost chastely, unspectacularly considering how long the build-up had dragged on, yet it still send an electric pulse down Marco’s body, starting from where Mario’s lips are moulded around his, wandering down and culminating where there bodies are touching. This isn’t weird at all; this feels like the last tiny piece of something that’s finally been put together after not being complete for ages, even if Marco hadn’t noticed that anything had been incomplete at first.  
  
They break apart long enough to catch some air and for Marco to drag one hand up Mario’s bare arm, letting it come to rest on his shoulder, on the crook of his neck, thumb digging into the hollow behind his collarbone.   
  
“Fucking hell,” Mario says, and that breaks the dam entirely at last.   
  
Marco dives forward and just fucking drowns in this; in skin and heat and lips and _tongues_. He feels high. His fingers cling to Mario like he’s the only reason he’s not drowning and that may well be true.   
  
  
  
  
“Do we need to make it, you know – official?” Marco asks some time early morning when they’re lying on Mario’s bed, on top of the covers, lips still bruised, hands and ankles still touching in the dark.   
  
“Nah,” Mario replies, voice heavy with approaching sleep. “Everybody thinks we’re screwing anyway.”  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
  


“At Barcelona, Messi, Xavi and Iniesta form a triangle. But together, Reus and Götze are on a different level. They’re the best football duo in the world.”  
 **Franz Beckenbauer, December 2012**  



End file.
